Next story in Hardball with Chris Matthews

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: He pushed Woodward and Bernstein as they unraveled Watergate, and, with them, kept the secret of Deep Throat for three decades. Tonight “The Washington Post” editor who broke the Watergate story, Benjamin Bradlee.

Let‘s play HARDBALL.

Good evening. I‘m Chris Matthews.

The end of history arrived here in Washington this week. After a third of a century, the city‘s biggest mystery was cracked. We found out who leaked the goods on Richard Nixon.

Here with me is the hard-charging boss of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the man who kept the heat on the two investigative reporters to get it right. Ben Bradlee was executive editor of “The Washington Post” during Watergate.

MATTHEWS: Well, it has. I can tell. And when it started, I wanted to know if you knew this was going to be the week that was going to blow the lid off the Deep Throat mystery.

BRADLEE: No, didn‘t have a clue. Didn‘t have a clue.

Went to work Tuesday morning and there the fax machine was pouring out this thing from “Vanity Fair.” Still haven‘t seen that magazine.

MATTHEWS: Right.

BRADLEE: And I knew that we were—had a nice day‘s work ahead of us and it was just great fun.

MATTHEWS: You know, many a night at a party, I‘ve come up to you and had said, did you hear Gergen just died? Or did you hear that Patrick Gray just died? And I‘m waiting to see your reaction. Is it going to be the movement in the pupils of the eye that says, my God, Deep Throat is gone?

How many guys have done that to you over the years?

BRADLEE: Oh, well, I get asked that pretty regularly, especially in my—and, stunningly, by the younger kids, who, if you...

MATTHEWS: Do they know the background or do they just know there‘s a Deep Throat?

BRADLEE: It is incredible. This, I think, is the beginning of the end of all of that.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: You think this is going to be like the curse of the Bambino up in Boston, where, once you finally get the series, it is over?

BRADLEE: But I think once—it is wrapped up now. There‘s that—there‘s—there‘s no unfinished business.

MATTHEWS: Case closed. Case closed.

BRADLEE: Case closed.

MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s talk about the case and what it meant to you.

You were out there on the firing line.

And I guess this must really bother you, this stuff that has been going on the last couple days, this sort of moral equality in the way this story has been covered the last couple days. I know because I‘ve watched your face on TV.

MATTHEWS: He was going—he whomped—he whomped McGovern. What that is all going on, what were you doing leading the charge for an investigation of a guy that is sure to win an election?

BRADLEE: Well, that didn‘t play much of a role for us.

We really—once we, you know, so quickly after this story started, we knew we had a good story here. We had traced money to the Committee to Reelect the President. And there was crisp $100 bills all around. And Maurice Stans was involved and finally the White House itself.

So—so, it just kept getting better and better and better. And for a while there, it didn‘t stop. And we owned it. We owned it. Subsequently—and let‘s get that straight. An awful lot of other papers and reporters did really good journalism. But, from the beginning there, we had a run.

MATTHEWS: All these things were moving in time. The FBI was doing the investigation, as you say, following the money right into the CREEP, or the headquarters of the president to get reelected.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: The—the—the—the—what‘s his name? Sirica was starting to squeeze the burglars.

BRADLEE: Yes, Sirica, big, important.

MATTHEWS: So, all these things were happening. But, yet, nobody else seemed to be covering this story with the vigilance you guys were putting into it.

BRADLEE: Well, it was our story. And—and you know out-of-town correspondents. They can‘t find a police station in Washington. And it was a police story for a while. And then, of course, it got out of being a police story. And...

MATTHEWS: No, she‘s open. You don‘t have to give it away. She was talking about it.

BRADLEE: I don‘t know...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: But Bob—why did you assign—why did you keep Woodward and Bernstein on that case?

BRADLEE: Because they were right. I mean, if you—if you‘re—if you‘re bringing the bacon home day after day after day, and nobody else is breaking a story about it, what—what‘s the excuse? You couldn‘t look them in the eye and say, you‘re off the story now.

MATTHEWS: When—you once told me this story about how Richard Nixon, president of the United States, called you, executive editor of “The Washington Post,” tried to warm you up one time. Was that during that period or before that period?

BRADLEE: No, I mean, he just—somebody told him, you know, you ought to call up Bradlee and chat.

And he called up one Saturday morning, which is a very informal place, “The Washington Post.” And some copy boy came running in and said that the president of the United States wants to talk to you. And I thought it was Buchwald or somebody like that, teasing.

MATTHEWS: Yes, Art Buchwald, yes.

BRADLEE: Yes, teasing me.

MATTHEWS: It wasn‘t satire, though. It was the real thing.

BRADLEE: It was the real thing.

MATTHEWS: And was it awkward, him on the phone with you?

BRADLEE: Well, he talked quite a lot. And he talked about his days in—as—during the war in Washington. What was he, OPA or—pricing tires.

Let me ask you about when it got tough. When did you first get the sense that covering the Watergate story was going to be a real, a real risk?

BRADLEE: Well...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: For your paper, for your publisher, for the whole enterprise, for your reporters?

BRADLEE: I began probably just before the election.

We ran dry. We just couldn‘t get a story. And the—the—the thing that rescued us then was Walter Cronkite coming out with two consecutive nights of seven-minute spots on this thing, big deal. That was the great white father blessing the story.

MATTHEWS: Right. Were you surprised that it didn‘t seem to move the electorate much?

MATTHEWS: ... may well have involved the president and may well have involved a burglary, a cover-up, all kinds of machinations? The dirty trick stories, you were already running them at that time, the Segretti stuff.

BRADLEE: Well, I mean, I don‘t think many newspapers were covering—the AP wasn‘t covering it after the first week or two. And I think that people who, out in the West, never saw about it. I guess these stories were on “The Washington Post”-“L.A. Times” news service. But it was a police story to them.

MATTHEWS: It got a little rough in the rhetoric. I mean, John Mitchell was former attorney general. He‘s the head of the Committee to Reelect the President.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: He calls up and says somebody—you know, Katie Graham is going to her teat caught in the ringer over there.

· and the people were pretty conservative at the time. Nobody liked the long-hairs and all that stuff, the McGovern crowd. Nixon gets reelected.

When did you sense that your coverage was going to lead to a big investigation by the Senate committee, the Ervin committee, the tapes were going to come out? All that—that whole dynamic that started...

(CROSSTALK)

BRADLEE: Not until really, until—well, we got a first smell of it when Barker asked at the—I guess it was at the arraignment, said he was working for the CIA.

MATTHEWS: One of the—one of the—one of the—one of the burglars.

BRADLEE: One of the burglars. And then—in front of Sirica. When it got to Sirica and Sirica—Sirica smelled...

MATTHEWS: You had the courts that wanted to get the truth. You were trying to get the truth.

The FBI—let‘s talk about Deep Throat here. When did you first get the sense that Carl and Bob had a really good source?

BRADLEE: Oh, right—right on, right—I mean, the first—certainly, the first few, I‘m going to say few weeks. But—yes—by the end of the first 30 days, he—we knew it.

And—and I didn‘t know who it was. I didn‘t. And then, funnily—

I don‘t think this could happen now. But I never asked him. I didn‘t ask.

MATTHEWS: Yes, particularly...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I remember with you in the movie, when Jason was playing you in the movie, Jason Robards, your buddy, your late buddy, he said, what do you got, some third-rate secretary with this information? Who you got here? Remember?

BRADLEE: He was pretty high up. That‘s what I knew. He was high up in the—actually, as I remember it, it was in the Justice Department. They didn‘t say number two in the FBI, because, you know, I could have found that out looking up in a book.

MATTHEWS: When you were in the war in World War II, and you‘d seen war.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: You‘d seen the Japanese fleet coming at you.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: You were not afraid of this, were you?

BRADLEE: I was—I was—I spent a lot of time being sure they were right.

MATTHEWS: Did you ever worry?

BRADLEE: Yes, of course I would worry.

MATTHEWS: Did you worry?

BRADLEE: Yes, I would worry.

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s talk about Deep Throat, this guy. Did you ever doubt—not that it mattered entirely, but the thrust of your reporting didn‘t require that this guy be totally ethical or loyal to his boss. (ph) Obviously, he was—he was leaking.

Then, beginning next week, HARDBALL celebrating its eight years on the air. Among our guests, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the man who plays me on “Saturday Night Live,” Darrell Hammond. Also, next week, we‘ll have a very special hour inside Opus Dei.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone is called to do God‘s will, to be a saint in the middle of the world through their ordinary work and ordinary situations each day. That‘s the key message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: That‘s HARDBALL‘s eight anniversary week for the next eight days, only on MSNBC.

What are your rules all the years at “The Post” about protecting sources?

Absolute?

BRADLEE: Absolute.

MATTHEWS: No questions asked? Never went to a reporter and said, you‘re going to have to out this person or...

BRADLEE: Publicly, no. They had to tell—they often had to tell the editors, not just me. But I—I—as I think back on that, I wonder why the hell I didn‘t. I just wasn‘t worrying about that, because the—he was delivering such a big load every—and he was right.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

And if the guy had a number of motives, you only cared about the one motive, which was to tell the truth.

· into your editor‘s office and says, I got the—and shows you some copy and you go, how do you know that? Who is this source guy? What is his—can you narrow it down?

You know, the new rule is, they‘re saying at “The Times” now, they have got to say what the motive is for not identifying the guy, someone who doesn‘t like this policy, you know, those kinds of things.

BRADLEE: Well, yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: According to someone who didn‘t want to be identified.

BRADLEE: So much you can do with identification, young, old, Army, Navy, boy, girl, age, you know, disenchanted, certainly, party, if you can do it.

MATTHEWS: There‘s a big fight going on right now about whether these two reporters, one for “The Times,” one for “TIME” magazine, Matt Cooper and Judy Miller—we know them both.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Who are—who are really heading towards the slammer, it looks like now, because they‘re not giving away their sources. You have got this hot-shot prosecutor looking into this case involving the outing of a secret—of a secret agent, basically. What do you make of that case, where somebody really was potentially harmed by this?

MATTHEWS: It was a pretty romantic account, but it worked for me. I mean, I liked it. You knew Jack Kennedy and all that.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Do you there are times when newspapers have a—have a responsibility to hold the story, a national security story?

BRADLEE: Oh, sure. Sure.

MATTHEWS: Like that one?

BRADLEE: Well, I‘ll tell you that...

MATTHEWS: Like, you know where the Cubans are about to invade their homeland and try to recapture it against Castro and you know what—when the D-day is and H-hour is?

BRADLEE: Well, well, you know, D-day and H-hour is—is tough.

Here‘s the—I don‘t know about an absolute right. Our rule became, and I think it is still in existence—that, when the government claimed national security, and we said OK, 24 hours. We‘ll hold it 24 hours and you make your case. And we‘ll make—we‘ll see if we can—we agree with it or we want to rebut it. And if they can‘t do it after that, we go.

There was—and I watched this all that day this story broke. I think it was Tuesday. When the word was out that Deep Throat had unmasked himself, at least his family members had...

BRADLEE: Sure.

MATTHEWS: And in those hours before he walked to that doorway. We had Tom Brokaw on. He said, the minute that guy stood up in the doorway, this deal was done. He said, it was clear he wanted to stand behind the family position.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Was the—tell me your thinking in those hours—how long do you think—because “The Post” was wrestling with this, whether they figured the story was broke and they had to go with it or they could still hold out for the information you guys only had.

BRADLEE: Yes. Here‘s what we were wrestling with. Was—did—did the story break the...

MATTHEWS: The tontine?

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: The life deal?

BRADLEE: We had promised never to tell anyway. If he tells somebody, I think that promise is silly. I mean, we‘re going to look...

· people wherein—people knew it. In 1979, I saw some story that actually they knew it and could have gone with it, but did not, or did go with it and nobody paid any attention to it.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BRADLEE: Everybody was guessing. And they all...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Was there ever a doubt—was there ever a possibility this Tuesday, when you heard that the story was going to be broken by “Vanity Fair,” this July issue, that you guys were just going to stonewall and say we‘re going to sit on this, and let them report it?

BRADLEE: Oh, that—that was—that was considered a—for a minute by Woodward. He thought, you know, he wasn‘t sure whether he had been released.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BRADLEE: He certainly hadn‘t been released by the guy...

MATTHEWS: Because of questions about the faculties of the guy, of Deep Throat.

BRADLEE: Well, about his faculties. And you know, it was the sister

· the daughter was releasing it. And—and the story—and this guy, who—not—story—the guy who wrote the book, wrote the story...

BRADLEE: Yes. Approached Woodward if he wanted to do a book. By the time he asked him, Woodward had finished his book on it.

MATTHEWS: Yes. Woodward is going to have a hell of a book on this, isn‘t he?

BRADLEE: That‘s in New York now. It will be out the 1st of July.

MATTHEWS: More with Ben Bradlee when we come back.

On Sunday night, don‘t miss our Deep Throat special, including my exclusive interview with Robert Redford at 8:00 p.m. At 9:00 p.m., Brian Williams‘ interview with President Clinton, followed by “Meet the Press.” It‘s HARDBALL celebrating eight years on MSNBC.

Ben, it was amazing watching these last three days of coverage and all the talk shows and the newspapers. There you are, the journalist, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, journalists, talking about winning the Pulitzer Prize for “The Post” and getting this big story and maybe making journalistic history.

And then you get Woodward—and then you get the guys on the show, like my colleague Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy, radio talk show host, and Chuck Colson with the prison ministries, and they‘ve got not only equal time with your guys, and sometimes they beat you on some of the shows, like today‘s show. But they seem to get moral equivalence with you in the way they‘re treated.

I mean, I—I—I think they‘re marginally fascinating, some of these guys. Some of them are pretty, pretty—you know, what you see is what you get. I don‘t—you know, I mean, he‘s got a beard now and he looks a little different.

MATTHEWS: Who is that?

BRADLEE: Erlichman.

MATTHEWS: Well, he passed away, actually.

BRADLEE: I know, but...

MATTHEWS: You think he was pretty much part of the problem?

(LAUGHTER)

BRADLEE: I don‘t think that was the strongest team the president could have had.

MATTHEWS: You know, when you listen to these darn tapes, when Nixon is at his worst...

MATTHEWS: Like, he‘s sitting there talking about Felt and how—who is this guy, Felt, the number two guy? And he said—Nixon, who seemed to always hired Catholics around him for some reason, said, who is this guy, a Catholic? I guess he thought, it was the FBI, Catholic. And he goes, no.

And then Haldeman says, no, he‘s Jewish. And Nixon says, oh. And then Haldeman says, that explains it.

MATTHEWS: Do you believe Nixon, who had been bugging the Democrats, who had been bugging—we‘ve got stuff on the tapes. He wanted to bug Brookings. He wanted to bug...

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Was bugging himself?

BRADLEE: You know, Woodward once said to me, when he came in—he kept sneaking in. And he said, would you believe that they have been taping every conversation? And I said, no way, Jose.

MATTHEWS: We‘re coming right back with Ben Bradlee.

And, on Monday, the first day of our anniversary week, we have a very special show. We‘ve brought together the 14 senators who defied their party leadership and kept the Senate going.

And journalism under fire. “TIME” reporter Matt Cooper will find out this month if he has to go to jail for refusing to name his source in the Valerie Plame-Bob Novak controversy. He‘ll be here, along with his lawyer, Ted Olson, and others to debate the ethics of protecting sources.

Ben, the biggest controversy—and you hear this, like, on FOX television and among the right wing generally—that we shouldn‘t be using, in journalism, unidentified sources, because they don‘t like the stories that are getting written. Tell me what your case is for why it is important to have people that don‘t go on the record.

BRADLEE: Well, it depends on the—you know, what is the information? Is it really good? Or is it just pretend good? Or is it just spicy?

But if it is a really significant thing, like what Felt was suggesting, I think it is worth—it is worth going with one source. That‘s the thing. More than the confidentiality, is it confirmable in any way?

MATTHEWS: So, in this—so, you think—your argument is, if you can confirm the story and it is solid as a fact and you‘re willing to bet on the fact of it...

BRADLEE: Yes, or a—a young student said. You can really help the reader say, oh, well, this is important or this is nothing.

MATTHEWS: What about when somebody gives sort of like just personality coverage and somebody said, X—X member of the staff of some morning talk show doesn‘t like the star on the show and says something catty—and says something catty. Is that worth putting in a paper?

MATTHEWS: One of the things you did to journalism in this town—and I always give you credit for it, because it—I enjoyed it—was style.

BRADLEE: Style. That was...

MATTHEWS: You took—I would pick up “The Washington”—back when I first came to this town in ‘71, I would pick up that big broadsheet of yours and it was like “The Philadelphia Inquirer,” but it was a lot more lively, I got to say. And I would go right to that style page and there would be some amazing takeout piece about somebody.

MATTHEWS: The great big personality piece that tells you who somebody is.

BRADLEE: It‘s copied. It‘s copied. Every section—every paper in the country has a style section now. They don‘t call it that.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Do they crackle?

BRADLEE: Life—well, some of them crackle. Some of them don‘t.

And I think it‘s—you know, that‘s a hard pace to keep, maintain.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BRADLEE: I think the style, our style section crackles a little less regularly than it did.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Well, let me tell you. Here‘s my two kinds of papers, the gray old lady up in New York, “The New York Times.” You‘ve got to—as Walter Shapiro (ph), a friend of mind, once said, you have got to read something else before you read that, because you can‘t get up to that level. You have got to read “The New York Post” first, because it really does—it may not be the most informative paper, but it is the most lively.

And you‘ve got to read a lively paper, then a boring paper. “The Post” was a good mix.

I don‘t think that—I don‘t sit still for saying that “The Times” is a boring paper. I think, recently, especially, I think they‘ve been doing a terrific job. And I think—you know, papers and the sections of papers are cyclical. Sometimes, your—you know, your sports section gets hot and everybody reads it. And you‘ve got a good bunch of young guys. And you suddenly turn around and those guys are 58 now.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BRADLEE: Look at those kids.

MATTHEWS: What was the secret? What was—maybe it‘s like—you‘re talking it‘s like a football team or a baseball team.

BRADLEE: Yes. They have good days. But—but I—but...

MATTHEWS: But you put together—I only got a minute here. You put together Woodward and Bernstein, Woodward, who had no training before.

Carl was a hell of a writer and a local guy from Montgomery Blair. You had

· you had Nick Von Hoffman on that paper writing poster all those years.

BRADLEE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: You know, you put together Walter and all those—Walter Pincus.

BRADLEE: If you look in your newsroom and you see everybody is standing up, something is going on that‘s good.

MATTHEWS: OK, let me ask you this. When I get young people in my office, producers, they‘re good producers. They read online. I say, anybody got a “Post” because I want to see what‘s at the movies tonight, they don‘t actually have “The Post.” They read it online. Is that a danger?

When we come back, how much has journalism changed since the days of Watergate? Journalists Richard Cohen and Karen Tumulty are going to join me.

And beginning next week, it‘s the eighth anniversary of HARDBALL. Not

everybody celebrates the eighth anniversary. And seven days is not enough

· Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bill Maher, and my Saturday night alter ego, Darrell Hammond. And, on Monday, HARDBALL brings together the new leadership of the Senate, those 14 compromise senators, Republican and Democrat, who rocked the Capitol with their last-minute deal.

I mean, you cannot—you cannot get out from people who are afraid of being punished or, in some other way, their career ruined. And the only place they have to go is the press. I mean, at that time, don‘t forget, look at the numbers of people who went to jail as a result of Watergate who were in the government. So, I mean, there was good reason for Mark Felt to fear for his career. There was good reason for other people in the government to fear their career. So, they had to go to the press. And their names could not be revealed.

MATTHEWS: So, Spiro Agnew, the vice president of the United States, the former governor of Maryland, was getting big manila envelopes filled with cash in his office at the old Executive Office Building and he would have continued to get those big envelopes of cash once a week if you hadn‘t gotten him. Right?

COHEN: Well, I wouldn‘t say necessarily that.

I don‘t think it is the press that ultimately convicts people. But you can keep the story out there and you can make government accountable. And what the prosecutors feared, people in the Justice Department who were down on the investigative, investigatory level feared, was that, in the event that they got on to Agnew, which they did do, that they would be punished for it, that they would be transferred, that the case would be sealed and put away.

There was precedent for this in the Justice Department. I understand

· we all know how much Mark Felt respected the FBI. But the FBI was a place where files could get lost and kept by J. Edgar Hoover.

MATTHEWS: Karen Tumulty, confidential sources, you have to defend them all the time.

KAREN TUMULTY, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, “TIME”: Except, that‘s that what‘s happening now, and certainly with my colleague, for instance, Matt Cooper, is that the government fights back.

And what we have discovered this year is that a lot of journalists are discovering that we‘re not as well protected in protecting our sources as we once thought we were. We‘re discovering in the Matt Cooper-Judy Miller case that, in fact, the press has—has very little solid legal ground to stand on if the government decides they want to come after you on this.

MATTHEWS: What has changed?

TUMULTY: I think that—I think that the aggressiveness of the government in coming—and also just...

I mean, the—the—the fact that, even this week, it just—it was like the swift boats all over again. I mean, the revelation of who Deep Throat was became yet another opportunity for the left and the right to start throwing spitballs at each other.

MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s talk about the right, because it seems to me, you normally wouldn‘t want to rip the scab off your old wound.

For some reason, the people around Richard Nixon have seen this as an opportunity not to show any shame, Dick, or to say, you know, that was a bad time and Nixon was wrong and we were wrong for helping him. They‘ve come back with a vengeance and attacked the source of the story in “The Washington Post,” Deep Throat, and “The Washington Post.”

I mean, Pat is out there. Pat Buchanan is out there calling Woodward and Bernstein stenographers and, basically, apparatchiks of a guy who is mad at the president.

COHEN: Yes. It‘s hard to get over. I mean, with Pat and Chuck Colson and the rest of them, you have got a collection there of criminals, adjudicated criminals...

MATTHEWS: Well, not Pat.

COHEN: No, no, not Pat, but the criminals and the criminally insane.

And I include him in that.

I mean, Richard Nixon and the people around him committed crimes. And those crimes were revealed by “The Washington Post” and Deep Throat and other people in the government. That‘s the fact of it. And for Pat to talk as the people who accused Nixon and uncovered these crimes and call them traitors and some word that he used for Mark Felt, I think is absolutely preposterous.

TUMULTY: And he said, God himself could not slaked it. Well, I don‘t think that you see that sort of commitment anymore with news organizations. They too much are too willing to cover the spitball fight.

MATTHEWS: Dick, you know, it is—it is a problem of moral equivalence, isn‘t it? Like, the loyalists to a president, the burglars, the cover-up guys, the guys who went to the can, to federal prison for felonies, are treated on the same level as a—as a bureaucrat who tells the truth to the press.

COHEN: Yes. Well, some of it—I mean, I—no aspersion on you, Chris, or your program, but some of it is television, because you always have the right and the left, the good guy and the bad gay.

MATTHEWS: I know. You know, I try to fight that, because, in the end, you have to ask people the right questions. It is one thing to have Pat on. But don‘t ask him about the ethics of Mark Felt, which some people do. Or don‘t ask a burglar who has gone to the federal prison for burglarizing, you don‘t ask him about ethics questions.

COHEN: Right.

I mean, people, I—I did a column on this. And now I‘ve gotten hundreds of e-mails. And some people say that, you know, comparing Mark Felt to, what‘s his name? I lost the one in the Monica Lewinsky.

TUMULTY: Linda Tripp.

COHEN: Linda Tripp.

And I‘m standing there stunned by it. I mean, is there—is there— is there no distinction in anybody‘s mind between somebody who covers up a crime and somebody who is a conspiracy to trap somebody in a crime? Is there no difference between government officials, high government officials who commit crimes and a president of the United States who commits a sex act? This is all crazy.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

COHEN: But it all seems to me, you know, right, left, back and forth, and it—and it is nonsense.

MATTHEWS: This we report, you decide stuff, well, there‘s—you have got to report more than—you‘ve got to report the facts, not just the personalities, and let people decide.

TUMULTY: But I think, in a lot of ways, it is easier for the news media to report the argument, as opposed to the facts.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

There was an illegal break-in. There was an illegal cover-up. It was reported by the press. A president resigned. Those are the facts. This is not an argument.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you, Karen. I wish we had more time. Karen Tumulty, great reporter for “TIME” magazine, Richard Cohen, who broke the Agnew story.

When we come back, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, he‘s going to talk about President Reagan‘s tribute to the daring battalion of Army Rangers in 1944 on D-Day and their assault on those German forces at Pointe du Hoc.

And this Sunday, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, join NBC‘s Brian Williams for a conversation with President Clinton, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan went to Normandy in France to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day. The two speeches Reagan gave that day are at the core of a new book by presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Second Ranger Battalion.”

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.

(APPLAUSE)

REAGAN: These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Doug Brinkley, the great historian, joins us now.

I got up that morning, watched “The Today Show.” It was on live. They timed it so he could do it. Ronald Reagan, the man who didn‘t actually fight in World War II, somehow managed to convey the spirit of that war better than anybody else in the country. How did he do it?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, during World War II, he was in San Francisco and Culver City. And he made over 300 training films for Army Air Corps.

And then, from there, he went down. But these films, I looked at some of them, 300 of them during World War II. And he became sort of the spokesperson for Hap Arnold and Army Air Corps. He would go to parades and things.

Well, then, as you know, Chris, in the ‘50s, he was spokesperson for General Electric.

MATTHEWS: Right.

BRINKLEY: So, when it came to 1984, it was a natural for him. He always used World War II as his touchstone event. But I think—he became a captain. But since he never served, due to bad eyesight—and I got his medical records. Some people have said he was trying to dodge service. They were awful.

MATTHEWS: No, I know he tried to go in. I know he tried to get in.

BRINKLEY: And he became, then, I think—before Tom Brokaw‘s greatest generation or Spielberg‘s “Saving Private Ryan” or Ambrose‘s “Band of Brothers,” it was his speech there.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: But it was something about his voice, that great all-American voice. I mean, I work for Tip all those years, when he was up against him. And Tip would always say, that voice is so American. What a great, powerful instrument.

But he seemed to be able to evoke us at our best, which was World War II. How do—you still haven‘t answered my question.

MATTHEWS: How did Ronald Reagan become the voice of the heroism in World War II?

BRINKLEY: Because, when they were looking for the 40th anniversary of D-Day commemoration, to go over there and give these speeches, I looked at the papers of Deaver and Darman and Peggy Noonan. And they were looking for a blockbuster speech.

The Vietnam War had torn the country apart. You know, the Watergate -

· and by ‘84, World War II triumphalism was a ticket to sell in a campaign year. It was about Walter Mondale. Deaver timed it, as you said, for the morning shows. But, also, they ran the clips of this at the Republican Convention. It became, it‘s morning again in America, the again being the World War II generation. And they were...

MATTHEWS: Whose spark was this? Whose idea originally? Was it Peggy?

(CROSSTALK)

BRINKLEY: No. Mike Deaver was the stagecrafter of Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach. But Peggy, only two months working for Ronald Reagan, never had met him.

MATTHEWS: Right.

BRINKLEY: When she wrote the speech.

MATTHEWS: OK, explain this to me, because I was a speechwriter. And Ted Sorensen was Jack Kennedy‘s speechwriter. And Sam Rosenman was Roosevelt‘s, you know, the great speechwriters.

How did they click? Where did Peggy, who never really lived on the level of Ronald Reagan—she was a regular girl from a regular family in New Jersey. How did she connect up with Reagan‘s soul?

BRINKLEY: That‘s a great question.

I mean, she was a conservative from New Jersey. She loved people like “The New Journalist”‘s Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe. And she worked on her writing a lot. She was considered the conservative at CBS with Dan Rather.

MATTHEWS: Hey, look, we‘re going to talk more about this some day.

But thank you. It is a great book.

BRINKLEY: OK.

MATTHEWS: Well, all your books are great. The book is called “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Second Ranger Battalion,” a great gift, by the way, Father‘s Day.

Next week, HARDBALL celebrates its eighth anniversary. And to kick it off, on Monday, we‘re bringing together the bipartisan group of moderate senators who brokered that deal to avoid the nuclear option in the filibuster fight. Look at them. They‘re all going to be together Monday. Also, Monday, “TIME” magazine‘s Matt Cooper, who is facing jail time for not revealing an anonymous source.

And next on COUNTDOWN, it‘s Keith Olbermann‘s top five stories of the week.

END

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